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Proposed reforms could divert 3,400 offenders from Ohio's overcrowded prisons. Not everyone is on board.

Updated April 26, 2017 at 12:35 PM;Posted April 24, 2017 at 5:00 PM

ohio prison Allen Oakwood

Ohio legislators are considering a couple bills that could keep non-violent, low-level offenders from serving sentences at Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution and other state prisons.
(John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio's prisons have been overcrowded for decades, but reform advocates say a handful of changes working their way through the state legislature could prevent thousands of criminals from entering prison in the first place.

The proposals emphasize rehabilitation, favored by conservative and liberal groups that advocate abandoning a "tough on crime" mentality. And they have the support of state prisons director Gary Mohr.

Opponents say some proposed changes go too far. Even supporters say the reforms are a small step, and more will be needed to significantly reduce the country's fourth-largest state prison population.

State prisons were built to house 38,579 inmates, but in March they housed about 50,160, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Ohio's prison population has increased about 15 percent since 2005, and the state plans to spend $3.9 billion on corrections over the next two years.

What's on the table

Lawmakers are reviewing reforms in two separate bills that would divert low-level offenders from prison, which supporters say will not only lower the prison population but improve recidivism rates.

Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said a proposal in the state budget could divert about 3,400 offenders from state prisons a year. He estimated that would save the state at least $20 million annually.

The plan is to expand a pilot program where counties agree to keep fifth-degree felons without violence or sex crime charges, serving 12 months or less, in local programs. That could mean jail or alternatives such as intensive supervision, work release, counseling and drug testing and electronic monitoring.

The state would reimburse counties up to $33 per convict per day -- less than the $67 currently spent on state prison inmates.

In 2018, the change would be mandatory statewide.

"Most importantly, these individuals will be diverted from the state prison system and will avoid facing a lifetime of collateral consequences," Mohr told lawmakers in February.

Senate Bill 66 would make rehabilitation one of three factors weighed during sentencing, in addition to punishment and protecting public safety.

It would also:

Eliminate automatic prison terms for technical parole violations such as being late to a meeting.

Allow someone with an unlimited number of fourth- and fifth-degree felony convictions to apply to have his or her record sealed.

Expand eligibility for drug and alcohol treatment in lieu of conviction to third-degree felons.

Rehabilitation and re-entry

Brandon Chrostowski knows how record sealing can change lives. He's seen it first-hand as an ex-offender and through people he's met through the Edwins Institute, a nonprofit re-entry program he founded in 2013.

The institute teaches culinary skills to people who have been incarcerated or otherwise involved in the justice system. More than 166 students have graduated from the program; 90 percent are working and only two individuals have returned to prison.

Chrostowski, who has stepped away from the organization to focus on his mayoral campaign, said probation and record sealing gave him his life.

"People didn't ask me what I did or where I was from -- it was refreshing," Chrostowski said. "I'm just a person trying to do good, not a criminal trying to get back."

The Ohio Judicial Conference, which represents the interests of the state's judges, likes the Senate-proposed reforms because they give more discretion to judges when sentencing individuals. Conference executive director Paul Pfeifer, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice and state legislator, said it's important the changes leave sentencing decisions to judges.

"We're in on that bill with both feet," Pfeifer said. "I don't think judges are opposed to having more tools at their disposal."

Backwards reform?

Prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officials have varying concerns with some of the proposals.

John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said laws shouldn't be written to accommodate the number of prison beds available. Moving nonviolent fifth-degree felons out of prison essentially makes them misdemeanor crimes, Murphy said.

Murphy said if the legislature wants to do that, that's fine, but doing so by limiting sentencing is a backwards way to do it.

"We've got to have sufficient prison space to deal with what courts need to deal with. This business of establishing a number and say we're not going to go over the number is ridiculous," Murphy said.

The Judicial Conference agrees the change is not the best route to address prison overcrowding. Pfeifer said common pleas judges support the effort to keep lower-level felons in the community when feasible, but there are some people who will not cooperate with community control.

"They violate and they violate and at some point we have to have in our hip pocket the ability to send them to prison, and they have to know we'll do that if they don't cooperate," Pfeifer said.

Pfeifer said lawmakers should find ways to encourage minimum terms and reduce the time inmates spend in prison. Efforts to do so in the 1990s and early 2000s were successful, he said, but voided by a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Marc Levin, policy director for national conservative organization Right on Crime, agrees Ohio could do much more to reduce its prison population. But Levin said the proposed reforms put Ohio on the right track for long-term changes.

Considering 23 percent of Ohio inmates were admitted for violating probation, Levin said seemingly small reforms can have a big difference.

"Even if it only affects 4,000 people -- that's not chicken feed," Levin said. "More relevant than the exact numbers is the fact it will mean more people in the workforce, taking care of their families and contributing to society."

Levin said similar reforms in Texas kept the state from building more prison space and led to closures in some facilities.

Policy Matters Ohio, a progressive Cleveland-based think tank, agrees. Researcher Michael Shields said prison overcrowding exposes inmates to more violence and they get fewer opportunities to participate in programs that can help them avoid committing new crimes.

"Ohio is taking a step in the right direction - let's hope it's the first of many such steps," Shields said.

An underfunded mandate

Mohr's proposal to keep fifth-degree felons in community programs is based off a pilot program that began in November in eight smaller counties. Mohr said participating counties have taken creative steps to address the issue, from hiring a medical director who assists the court in selecting drug treatment options to adding a detox center in a vacant wing of a county jail.

Kasich's proposed 2018-19 state budget includes additional $19 million for community-based initiatives in the 2017-2018 fiscal year and an additional $39 million the following year.

Critics say it's too soon to know whether the pilot program will work on a larger scale, let alone statewide, and the state's planned reimbursement rate is too low to cover costs.

The proposed $33 per inmate rate would cover simple alternatives such as electronic monitoring but is not enough to cover counseling costs or a day in county jail, county officials say.

Of the roughly 4,000 fifth-degree felons admitted to state prisons last year, 357 were from Cuyahoga County, the most in the state followed by Hamilton (332) and Montgomery (261) counties. Thirty-eight counties sent fewer than 20 inmates each.

"Philosophically, this is a movement in the right direction, but we don't think it can be accomplished and make it mandatory for the counties in 12 months," said John Leutz of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio.

Leutz said counties are already financially burdened from past state budget cuts and anticipated revenue loss from the elimination of a sales tax on Medicaid providers.

What victims want

Defiance County Prosecutor Morris Murray disagrees with granting "rehabilitation" the same weight as addressing public safety and punishment, which he said should be the first priority in sentencing.

"There's a misperception that everybody in prison with fourth- or fifth-degree felonies is there because of a drug addiction or nonviolent crimes, but that ignores an inmate's criminal history," Murray said.

Two-thirds of the Cuyahoga County inmates sent to prison in 2016 were previously incarcerated.

Murray said theft and drug trafficking are not victimless crimes, and judges should retain the ability to send them to prison. Murray said judges already have discretion in sentencing and the fifth-degree felons sentenced to prison had to work pretty hard to get there.

"Prosecutors are all about treatment and rehabilitation for guys that appear to have a shot at it and need it for addiction. But there is some accountability to the public for those kinds of offenses," Murray said.

"They want what happened to them not to happen again and not to happen to others," said Robert Rooks, co-founder and vice president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which conducted the survey. "They haven't seen the type of impact they were told they were going to get from incarceration."

Rooks said that's especially true for cases involving addiction, where inmates leave prison no better and often worse than before they entered. Rooks said the proposed Ohio reforms will nudge judges to reorient the system toward rehabilitation and help expand successful programs.

"We need to expand opportunities for carrots," Rooks said. "There are programs on the ground providing diversionary treatment and support to people and those programs aren't nearly at the scale the need to be."

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